A History of the Study of Political Communication
JOMC 890
Tuesday, 9:00-11:45am, Carroll 338
Professor: Daniel Kreiss
E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 415.238.6924 (mobile)
Twitter: @kreissdaniel
Office: 377 Carroll Hall
Hours: 12pm-1pm, Tuesday
and by appointment
Overview
This course will engage students in an interdisciplinary and mixed methods set of
readings that can broadly be considered to comprise the history of political
communication research. The goal of this course is to move beyond the current
theoretical and methodological paradigms of the field, and consider historically how
scholars have studied the organization, production, and effects of political
communication and their democratic consequences. In addition, we will explore new
frontiers of research that expand our conception and understanding of political
communication from scholars of many other disciplines.
This course is designed to make an argument about what the study of political
communication was, how it has changed, and what it could be. As such, it is not a formal
intellectual history, although we will encounter readings that do just that. The readings in
this course are by no means comprehensive of political communication research and its
many subfields. Even more, many scholars we will read may not recognize themselves as
‘political communication’ researchers, even though that describes their objects of
analyses. For the purposes of this course, the borders around ‘political communication’
are deliberately ill-defined - at its broadest, it is the study of the institutional (campaigns,
legislative bodies, the presidency, the press, civil society organizations) and extrainstitutional (movements) actors, events, processes, and technologies that constitute
democratic life.
In the end, the readings for this course are meant to be thought provoking and push
the boundaries of what we consider to be ‘political communication.’ Even more, these
works represent various strands of empirical research and social thought over the last
century, showing how much of communication and media research across an interdisciplinary set of fields was always oriented towards normative questions of democracy.
Readings
There are nine required books for this class, in addition to book and journal readings that
will be available on Sakai.
Calhoun, Craig J., ed. Habermas and the public sphere. MIT press, 1992.
Chadwick, Andrew. The hybrid media system. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Eliasoph, Nina. Avoiding politics: How Americans produce apathy in everyday life.
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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Entman, Robert M. Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and US foreign
policy. University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Herbst, Susan. Reading public opinion: How political actors view the democratic
process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Peters, John Durham, and Peter Simonson, eds. Mass communication and American
social thought: Key texts, 1919-1968. Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Prior, Markus. Post-broadcast democracy: How media choice increases inequality in
political involvement and polarizes elections. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Schudson, Michael. The good citizen. Basic Books, 1998.
Turner, Fred. The democratic surround: Multi media and American liberalism from World
War II to the psychedelic 60s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Grades
Graduate grades are H, P, L, F. I determine your grade by active participation in class,
the quality of your assignments, and your work in relation to others.
The following is a general description of graduate grades:
• H means a truly outstanding performance in the class and on assignments.
• P is a solid performance overall in the class and on assignments.
• L is a performance in the class and on assignments that is below the acceptable
level for graduate students. It means the student does not understand the
course material very well, does not have a grasp of what is required in this
area at the graduate level, is not participating in the class, is not handing in
assignments on time, or is not participating in research basics or in-class
exercises.
• F is failing.
Grading Percentages
Participation: 20%
Assignments: 30%
Final Paper: 50%
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Course Requirements
Participation
This course is a seminar, and as such it is premised on active discussion. You are
expected to come to class having completed the readings and ready to discuss them.
Critical interpretations of the literature encountered in the course are particularly valued.
Sakai Discussion
You are responsible for posting a long-form discussion comment (about 500 words) each
week about the readings on the course Sakai forum. These comments should be reasoned
and developed starting points for group discussion, and they should end with the posing
of at least one question that we will take up in class. You are responsible for reading the
comments of your peers in advance of class.
Assignments
“Opening” a Text for Class Discussion: Due Date TBA
At some point in the course you will “open” a text for class discussion. This entails a
formal presentation that 1) summarizes the key arguments of the text, 2) details the
location of the work in terms of the field of communication and related disciplines, 3)
presents and assesses the theoretical and methodological approach(es) of the author(s), 4)
and commences class discussion. Your presentation should focus on the relationship
between theory, method, and evidence. You are also responsible for facilitating the
discussion of the text.
Term Paper
In the hope that this class will further your research, you can pursue one of two options
for your class paper.
Option 1: Research Project
Students pursuing this option will conduct original political communication research
during the course of the semester and write a paper based on it. The goal is that this
could potentially become a journal article or even a chapter of a thesis or dissertation.
You may choose any methodological approach. Students pursuing this option must also
complete the Collaborative IRB Certification training online (if you have not already) at:
https://research.unc.edu/offices/human-research-ethics/researchers/training/index.htm. If
you planning on carrying this work outside of class, you should also complete an IRB
proposal (I am happy to guide you in this).
Option 2: Your Choice
I am open to other approaches to the final paper given the diversity of student interest in
the class. If you want to pursue a different project, submit your plan in writing.
For both options, you will present your preliminary work midway through the semester
and deliver a 15 minute presentation of your final paper to the class during the scheduled
final exam period.
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The Honor Code
The Honor Code is in effect at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If you
have questions about the Honor Code, please see me or read more at http://honor.unc.edu
Course Schedule
January 14th
Course Overview
These readings will be discussed in class and must be read in advance
W. Lance Bennett and Shanto Iyengar. 2008. “A New Era of Minimal Effects? The
Changing Foundations of Political Communication.” Journal of Communication 58 (4):
707–731.
David Karpf, Daniel Kreiss, and Rasmus Nielsen. 2013. “A New Era of Field Research in
Political Communication?” Paper presented at the 2013 International Communication
Association Annual Conference and forthcoming; ICA 2013 Theme Book (in press).
Available online at: http://qualpolicomm.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/
karpfkreissnielsen_newerapolicomm.pdf
Recommended:
Holbert, R. L, K. Garrett, & L. S. Gleason. (2010). “A New Era of Minimal Effects? A
Response to Bennett and Iyengar.” Journal of Communication 60 (2010) 15–34.
Neuman, W. Russell, and Lauren Guggenheim. "The Evolution of Media Effects Theory:
A Six-Stage Model of Cumulative Research." Communication Theory 21, no. 2 (2011):
169-196.
January 21st
The Foundational Debate
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion
Available at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/Lippman/cover.html
John Dewey, The Public and its Problems
Available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780271058320
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January 28th
The Field Before it Was a Field
Peters and Simonson, Introduction and Part One
Recommended:
Berelson, Bernard R., Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhee. 1954. Voting: A
Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Lazarsfeld, Paul and Morris Rosenberg (eds.). (1955). The Language of Social Research.
The Free Press: New York.
February 4th
The Field Before it Was a Field
Peters and Simonson, Part Two
Recommended:
Lang, Kurt and Gladys Engel Lang. Television and Politics. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
Lazarsfeld, Paul, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. (1968 [1944]). The People’s
Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in an Election Campaign. (3rd Edition). New
York: Columbia University Press.
February 11th
The Field Before it was a Field
Peters and Simonson, Part Three
Recommended:
Lang, Gladys Engel and Kurt Lang. (1983). The Battle for Public Opinion: The
President, the Press, and the Polls During Watergate. New York: Columbia University
Press.
February 18th
The Founding and Foundations of the Current Field
Bennett, W. Lance, and Murray Edelman. "Toward a new political narrative." Journal of
communication 35, no. 4 (1985): 156-171.
Iyengar, S. M.D. Peters, and D.R. Kinder. (1982). “Experimental Demonstrations of the
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of the “Not-So-Minimal” Consequences of Television News Programs.” The American
Political Science Review. 74(4): 848-858.
Iyengar, S., Kinder, D. R., Peters, M. D., & Krosnick, J. A. (1984). “The evening news
and presidential evaluations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46,
778-787.
Iyengar, S., & Behr, R. "Television news, real-world cues, and changes in the public
agenda”, Public Opinion Quarterly , 49, 1985, 38-57. Kaid, Lynda Lee, and Keith R. Sanders. "Political Television Commercials An
Experimental Study of Type and Length." Communication Research 5, no. 1 (1978):
57-70.
Nimmo, Dan. "Political image makers and the mass media." The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 427, no. 1 (1976): 33-44.
Nimmo, Dan. "Mass communication and politics." In The Handbook of political
behavior, pp. 241-288. Springer US, 1981.
Tversky, Amos, D. Kahneman, and Rational Choice. "The framing of decisions." Science
211 (1981): 453-458.
Recommended
Iyengar, Shanto, and Adam F. Simon. "New perspectives and evidence on political
communication and campaign effects." Annual review of psychology 51, no. 1 (2000):
149-169.
Patterson, Thomas E. Out of order. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Zaller, John, ed. The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge university press,
1992.
February 25th
Contemporary Perspectives on Media Choice
Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy
Recommended:
Huckfeldt, Robert, Paul E. Johnson, and John Sprague. Political disagreement: The
survival of diverse opinions within communication networks. Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
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Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald Kinder. (2010, [1987]). News that Matters: Television and
American Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Norris, Pippa. A virtuous circle: Political communications in postindustrial societies.
Cambridge, 2000.
Stroud, Natalie Jomini. Niche news: The politics of news choice. Oxford University Press,
2011.
March 4th
Contemporary Perspectives on Framing and Priming
Entman, Projections of Power
Recommended:
Althaus, Scott L. and Young Mie Kim. 2006. “Priming Effects in Complex Information
Environments: Reassessing the Impact of News Discourse on Presidential Approval.”
Journal of Politics 68 (4): 960-976.
Bartels, Larry M. 1993. “Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure.”
The American Political Science Review (87) 2: 267-285.
Bennett, W. Lance, and Robert M. Entman, eds. Mediated politics: Communication in the
future of democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Bucy, E. Page, and R. Lance Holbert, eds. (2011). Sourcebook for Political
Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques. New York:
Routledge.
Erbring, Lutz, Edie N. Goldenberg, and Arthur H. Miller. 1980. “Front-Page News and
Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media.” American Journal of
Political Science 24: 16-49.
Entman, Robert M. "Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm."Journal of
Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51-58.
Gamson, William A., David Croteau, William Hoynes, and Theodore Sasson. "Media
images and the social construction of reality." Annual review of sociology (1992):
373-393.
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Gamson, William A., and Gadi Wolfsfeld. "Movements and media as interacting
systems." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1993):
114-125.
Graber, Doris A. 1988. Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide 2nd
ed. New York: Longman.
Mendelberg, Tali. The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages and the norm of
equality. Princeton University Press, 2001.
Scheufele, Dietram A. "Framing as a theory of media effects." Journal of communication
49, no. 1 (1999): 103-122.
March 11th
The Public Sphere
Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere
Skim: Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Available at: http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/
publicness/habermas_structural_trans_pub_sphere.pdf
Recommended:
Bohman, James. Public deliberation: pluralism, complexity and democracy. The MIT
press, 2000.
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Norman Fairclough. Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking
critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Dahlgren, Peter. Television and the public sphere: Citizenship, democracy and the media.
Vol. 10. Sage, 1995.
Delli Carpini, Michael X., Fay Lomax Cook, and Lawrence R. Jacobs. “Public
Deliberation, Discursive Participation, and Citizen Engagement: A Review of the
Empirical Literature.” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004): 315-44.
Gastil, John, Laura W. Black, and Kara Moscovitz. 2008. “Ideology, Attitude Change,
and Deliberation in Small Face-to-Face Groups.” Political Communication 25 (1):
23-46.
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Huckfeldt, Robert. 2007. “Unanimity, Discord and the Communication of Public
Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (4): 978-995
Melucci, Alberto. Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age.
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Mutz, Diana C., and Paul S. Martin. 2001. "Facilitating Communication across Lines of
Political Difference: The Role of Mass Media." American Political Science Review 95 (1)
97-114.
Page, Benjamin I., and Robert Y. Shapiro. The rational public: Fifty years of trends in
Americans' policy preferences. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Sanders, Lynn M. "Against deliberation." Political theory 25, no. 3 (1997): 347-376.
Schudson, Michael. 1997. “Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy.” Critical
Studies in Mass Communication. 14: 297-309
Taylor, Charles. Modern social imaginaries. Duke University Press, 2004.
Thompson, John B. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford
University Press, 1995.
Warner, Michael. "Publics and counterpublics." Public culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 49-90.
Wessler, Hartmut. 2008. “Investigating Deliberativeness Comparatively.” Political
Communication 25 (1): 1-22.
March 25th
Cultural Approaches to Political Communication
Schudson, The Good Citizen
Recommended:
Fenno, Richard F. Home style: House members in their districts. Boston: Little, Brown,
1978.
Hart, Roderick P. Campaign talk: Why elections are good for us. Princeton University
Press, 2009.
March 27th
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Fred Turner will be visiting UNC to discuss his new book
Turner, The Democratic Surround
April 1st
The Qualitative Sociological Tradition of Research on Civil Society and Movements
Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics
Recommended:
Alexander, Jeffrey C. The civil sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. "Cultural pragmatics: Social performance between ritual and
strategy." Sociological Theory 22, no. 4 (2004): 527-573.
Benson, Rodney. "Bringing the sociology of media back in." Political Communication,
21, no. 3 (2004): 275-292.
Berry, Jeffrey M., and Sarah Sobieraj. The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media
and the New Incivility. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Gamson, William A. Talking politics. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Gitlin, Todd. (1978). “Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm.” Theory and Society
6(2): 205-253.
Katz, Elihu. "Why sociology abandoned communication." The American Sociologist 40,
no. 3 (2009): 167-174.
Lee, Taeku. 2002. Mobilizing Public Opinion: Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in
the Civil Rights Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Polletta, Francesca. Freedom is an endless meeting: Democracy in American Social
Movements. University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Pooley, Jefferson, and Elihu Katz. "Further Notes on Why American Sociology
Abandoned Mass Communication Research." Journal of Communication 58, no. 4
(2008): 767-786.
Sobieraj, Sarah. Soundbitten: The perils of media-centered political activism. NYU Press,
2011.
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April 8th
The Qualitative Political Science Tradition Of Research on Public Opinion
Herbst, Reading Public Opinion
Recommended:
Edelman, Murray Jacob. The symbolic uses of politics. University of Illinois Press, 1985.
Edelman, Murray. Constructing the political spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988.
Farr, James, John S. Dryzek, and Stephen T. Leonard, eds. (1995). Political Science in
History: Research Programs and Political Traditions. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Gaventa, John. Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian
valley. University of Illinois Press, 1982.
Gerber, Alan S., James G. Gimpel, Donald P. Green, and Daron R. Shaw. 2011. “How
Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads?
Results from a Randomized Field Experiment” American Political Science
Review 105 (1): 135-150
Gershon, Sarah Allen. (2012). “Press Secretaries, Journalists, and Editors: Shaping Local
Congressional News Coverage.” Political Communication 29, no. 2 (2012): 160- 183.
Just, Marion R., Ann N. Crigler, Dean E. Alger, Timothy E. Cook, Montague Kern and
Darrell M. West. 1996. Crosstalk: Citizens, Candidates, and the Media in a
Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mutz, Diana. 1998. Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect
Political Attitudes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Walsh, Katherine Cramer. (2004) Talking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social
Identity in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
April 15th
Science and Technology Studies and Political Communication
Marres, Material Participation
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Recommended
Anderson, C. W., and Daniel Kreiss. "Black Boxes as Capacities for and Constraints on
Action: Electoral Politics, Journalism, and Devices of Representation." Qualitative
Sociology 36, no. 4 (2013): 365-382.
Barry, Andrew. Political machines: Governing a technological society. Continuum
International Publishing Group, 2001.
Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting things out: Classification and its
consequences. The MIT Press, 2000.
Callon, Michel. Acting in an uncertain world. MIT Press, 2009.
Carroll, Patrick. Science, culture, and modern state formation. Univ of California Press,
2006.
Latour, Bruno, and Peter Weibel. "Making things public: atmospheres of
democracy." (2005).
April 22nd
Technological Change, Media Practice, and Political Communication
Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System
Recommended
Howard, P. N. (2006). New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Karpf, David. The MoveOn effect: The unexpected transformation of American political
advocacy. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Kreiss, Daniel. Taking our country back: The crafting of networked politics from Howard
Dean to Barack Obama. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. Ground wars: Personalized communication in political
campaigns. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Vaccari, Cristian. Digital politics in Western democracies: a comparative study. JHU
Press, 2013.
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Week of April 27th
Final Paper Presentations
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